Computer software applications allow users to create a variety of documents to assist them in work, education, and leisure. For example, popular word processing applications allow users to create letters, articles, books, memoranda, and the like. Spreadsheet applications allow users to store, manipulate, print, and display a variety of alphanumeric data. Such applications have a number of well known strengths including rich editing, formatting, printing, calculation and on-line and off-line editing.
Most computer software applications do not contain all necessary programming for providing functionality required or desired by every potential user. Many programmers often wish to take advantage of an existing application's capabilities in their own programs or to customize the functionality of an application and make it more suitable for a specific set of users or actions. For example, a programmer working in the financial industry may wish to customize a word processor for a user audience consisting of financial analysts editing financial reports. In recent years, the Extensible Markup Language has been used widely as an interchangeable data format for many users. A word processor, spreadsheet application or other application capable of validating Extensible Markup Language (XML) data against an attached or associated XML schema file provides value to its users. However, because the functionality of the schema validation model of the application is not exposed to the programmer, the programmer is not able to customize or modify the schema validation model to work with the programmer's own customized versions of the application or documents prepared by the application.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a programmable object model for allowing users/programmers to programmatically access, supplement or otherwise modify an application's XML validation functionality. It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present invention has been made.